Finding Your Way, Part 4: Walk Humbly With Your God
Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 11:25-30
Micah 6:8
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Matthew 11:25-30
New International Version (NIV)
The Father Revealed in the Son
25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
27 "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
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So today we're on the final part of a series called, "Finding Your Way." It's based on the idea that even though you can find direction for life in about a million places - like, the barber shop, the beauty salon, the soccer game, lunch with friends, meetings with co-workers, talk radio, the school restroom, the other kids in your day care, Twitter, Facebook, Us Magazine weekly, your husband, your wife, your grandmother, your tattooed neighbor who never wears a shirt and is always on the front porch, shouting into his cell phone...
This series of messages is based on the idea that even though you can find direction out there from about a million places, that ultimately, God's direction is better. God's direction is better than Cosmo, better than GQ, better than Rush Limbaugh, better than Jon Stewart... God's direction better than anybody and anyplace else.
A long time ago, about two-thousand, five-hundred years ago, give or take a year, the prophet Micah, speaking on behalf of God, gave some direction for finding your way through all the advice the world has to offer. Micah, speaking on behalf of God, gave guidance for finding your way when there's NO advice. Micah, speaking on behalf of God, gave direction when you know in your gut you're getting BAD advice. And Micah's direction for life was pretty simple. Micah, speaking on behalf of God, gave us some requirements for being a quality human being. And it went like this:
What does the Lord require of you, O mortal?
He addresses it to "O mortal." Not iMortal. Not M Mortal. O mortal. When Micah-slash-God asks this rhetorical question, it's addressed not to just one person, not just us, not them, those "they" people over there. This isn't just what God requires of the people on this side of the sanctuary. This isn't just what God requires of the people in the back row of the Choir. This is addressed to "O mortal." Hello, O. Micah-slash-God means, "Everybody." All y'all. And all them. God's giving direction to every single human being on the face of the planet.
What does the Lord require of you, O mortal? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
That's it: Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.
And I suppose the way it says, "Your" God, you might argue that this three-part vision statement applies to all people of all religions. And every major religion on earth has some variant of this statement, so it's not unique. But we're not those other religions. We're followers of the God for whom Micah spoke. We're followers of the God who said these words. We're followers of Jesus, who lived these words to perfection. So, if we are Christians, if we are followers of the God of Jesus Christ, these are not nuggets of helpful advice. These are requirements.
You, and you, and I, are REQUIRED to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
Our God. You, plural. WE are REQUIRED as a group, required as a people, required as a church that's part of Christ's church universal to: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
So, in the previous weeks, we've done justice and we've loved kindness. Check. And check. At least, I hope we have. Today we're walking humbly with our God.
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Body language tells us a lot about people. You can tell in an instant when someone is NOT walking humbly, right? People who do NOT walk humbly walk with attitude. They have a swagger. Actually, I think that's pronounced, "Swaggah." Quarterbacks. Models. Billionaires. They've got serious swag. It's men who tug on their shirt cuffs a lot. It's women who carry very tiny purses.
It's hard to walk with attitude when your purse is large enough to carry your kid's soccer pads. Hard to maintain attitude when you get in a meeting and realize your business suit is covered in dog hair. Hard to be cool when your emergency phone calls are about bringing home more toilet paper. Really quick. It's hard to walk with attitude if you're walking with a cane, unless you're British, or Dumbledore.
I don't usually hang out with models or billionaires. Maybe you do. The people I normally hang out with tend to walk more carefully. Maybe it's because they're wearing bifocals. Or maybe it's because of the time they walked face-first into the stop sign they forgot was behind them. One person I got behind last week was involved in a meandering phone call and likewise was mindlessly wandering to the left, to the right, left, no, right again, as if there was no one else in the world. There's a difference between walking with attitude and walking clueless.
I know people who walk with attitude with God. I also know people who walk cluelessly with God. I know people who walk as though God, or life in general, has placed the weight of the world on their shoulders.
How's your walk going?
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Back in Bible times, when people carried water, instead of cell phones, they had yokes that they'd brace over their shoulders and hang their buckets from each end. It was pretty good technology. It kept you in shape and it kept you in balance. It gave you the power to carry at least twice what you ordinarily could. Your yoke made you stronger. Your yoke gave purpose to your walk.
About 500 years after Micah, Jesus talked about walking humbly, too. He used the image of a yoke. He said,
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
People who carried yokes were obviously humble. If you had attitude, you had someone else carrying your yoke for you. If you had a yoke, you put stuff on it you didn't mind the world seeing. You carried your water, maybe your food. You didn't hang flat-screen TVs from a yoke. You carried essentials. And, by the very nature of the technology, you carried it humbly.
So when Jesus says to "take my yoke upon you" he's saying to not worry about letting the world see what you've got on you. And what do you have? You've got the good news of Jesus Christ. The one who comes to relieve the burdens of the people who've got the whole world on their shoulders.
When Jesus says to "take my yoke upon you," he's also saying someone who walks with Christ walks humbly. In other words, lose the attitude, take on the yoke.
Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." In other words, if you're all grumpy, and judgmental, and burdened with enduring this wretched world, you may have picked up the wrong yoke at baggage claim.
On the other hand, it's still a yoke. Your yoke's not a joke and it's OK not to be doing that coat-hanger Christian smile all the time.
Carrying a yoke takes a sense of balance. And if your sense of life feels out of balance, that's sign number one you could use an adjustment. Or someone to help you carry your burdens, whatever they are.
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Because, you see, ultimately, it's not how YOU walk, or how much justice YOU do, or how much kindness YOU feel all tingly and loving about. If you do walk humbly, and if you do love kindness and if you do do justice, awesome. Remember, though, this isn't about iMortal; it's about O Mortal.
If we take the book of Micah, or the preachings of Jesus and if we think they're written specifically for me, or for you, then we miss the whole point. Unlike all the other advice in the world, the Bible isn't a book about self-improvement. Oprah's about self-improvement. Jesus is not Oprah. Jesus is about something else. God is about something greater than self-improvement. God is about something greater than self-preservation.
The Bible speaks to all of us, together. Micah spoke to his whole nation. The Bible speaks to our nation. The Bible speaks to our world. And it says, "You want a place you can be proud of? Then do justice. Not just with O. J. Simpson and Muammar Gaddafi and Lindsay Lohan. Do justice with your family. Do justice with the people who don't have health care. Do justice with people who don't have jobs.
The Bible speaks to our world. And it says, "You want a place you can be proud of? Then love kindness. And not just with the people who are kind to you first. Or who you're relatively sure can repay their debt of kindness back to you. Be kind to the people who don't deserve kindness. Be kind to the people who'll never know you're being kind. Be kind, even if it means not giving people what they say they want because in the end what they want would hurt them."
And, the Bible speaks to our world. And it says, "You want a place you can be proud of? Then walk humbly with your God. And maybe, in 2011, that means letting other people walk humbly with their god, or their interpretation of God, and not getting all defensive about it. It means walking with balance. Walking with neither attitude nor chronic unhappiness. It means helping people who are out of balance, or carrying more than they can handle.
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We as individuals, can always tell how far away from the mark we are, or how close we are, if we measure ourselves by the question: "Am I doing justice? Am I loving kindness? Am I walking humbly with our God?"
As a church, the same questions apply, too. We can tell how well we're doing by asking how we're doing. Are we as a congregation doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God?
And, as a church, we can be modern-day Micahs. We can ask of our society, our culture, our government, "Are we doing justice, are we loving kindness, and are we walking humbly with our God? Really?"
But I phrased the question the wrong way. I said, "We can," we can, we can. But that's wrong. Because if we're followers of Christ, if we're people who walk, if we're people who find our way in the footsteps of Jesus, then this is not optional. This is not a "we can." This is a "we must." Because all this stuff is required of you, O Mortal.
So take that yoke upon you. And may we all do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
Sent with Writer.
- James
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